by Glen Springer | Mar 10, 2017
If you have been in business for more than 3 years it should now be abundantly clear that we all are experiencing a dramatic shift in sales and marketing where outsourcing sales can help you quickly address these issues:
- Buyers are now in control of the sales process and solutions are first “bought”— with digital content that proves you understand your buyers’ needs and pains—then “sold” by closers, once buyers feel educated enough to engage in deeper discussions.
- Buyers want to understand how you solve their problem, and then want to understand your product features. So your reps need content and tools to tell that story.
- You can no longer just throw callers at lead generation to solve your early stage funnel issues because buyers simply don’t pick up the phone as often as they used to.
Success now requires a team of sales and marketing professionals running integrated campaigns and technology to successfully sell to the new digitally driven buyer.
And once a business owner reaches this conclusion they will often decide to consider outsourcing sales. They will consider outsourcing sales as a solution to help them cover some of the talent and expertise gaps they have in their existing organization because they don’t have the time or the expertise to recruit, hire and train a team with the experts required to sell to the new digital buyer.
Below is a quick list of the sales and marketing talent an outsourcing sales company can bring to the table in less than 30 days.
- A senior strategist – Your outsourced sales campaign will be guided by a strategist that understand how to tell a powerful sales story using digital marketing and sales reps.
- Content producer – An integrated campaign will require content production. A sales outsourcing company will be able to supply a team of video producers, copy writers and graphic designers on a part time basis to support your efforts.
- Sales technology specialist – You will immediately gain access to a marketing automation and CRM specialist to make sure your systems are implemented with best practices to produce the results you need.
- Marketing manager – You will have a marketing manager to manage your inbound and outbound campaigns and reporting, and ensure your digital marketing and lead gen success.
- Database specialist – Managing an early stage pipeline requires clean and updated data. You will have a specialist that understands how to build and manage a database of leads.
- Buyer development and inside sales reps – Even if you can drive all your leads with inbound marketing you will eventually need someone to qualify your leads or manage the close of the sale. An outsourced sales company can provide and scale that team.
To learn more about Gabriel Sales ability to help you quickly build and staff a repeatable sales and marketing process please feel free to visit our outsourcing sales page.
by Glen Springer | Mar 8, 2017
One of the top reasons businesses consider an outsourced sales solutions is to generate more top of funnel leads and sales qualified leads for their senior sales reps. An outsourced sales company will typically have expertise in multiple lead generation tactics to make generating both types of sales leads more effective and efficient. And one of these areas will be email marketing.
As part of Gabriel Sales outsourced sales campaigns we write multiple types of sales and marketing emails to generate new leads and to develop buyers not ready to buy. Subsequently, we look at a lot of research, and analyze a lot of our own data. So here are some of our best practices you can expect when you run an outsourced sales campaign that you can also apply as best practices to your own email marketing lead generation and lead development efforts.
Don’t expect a miracle
Emails are a great way to introduce your solution and the problems you solve for a buyer. They are a great way to make buyers aware you exist. They are a great way to start a digital dialogue with the buyer. They are a great way to move a buyer deeper into the sales funnel. And they are a great way to kick off an outsourced sales lead generation campaign to build a short list of early stage buyers for buyer development reps to call. But buyers rarely buy or immediately schedule an appointment after getting one email from you so don’t expect a miracle.
Know what your specific sales or marketing goal is for each email
In this era of content marketing and access to digital education, email is being used for multiple purposes, so it is important to set a goal for each email. If it’s an initial email lead generation campaign you may just want to introduce a problem you help solve to identify buyers that need that problem solved. You may have a new solution you want to introduce.
If it is buyer you have been developing for awhile that has opened multiple emails or that has engaged with your content in the past, you may want to ask for an appointment or to engage in deeper stage content to move them deeper into the funnel.
Know what your goal is for every email, and don’t try to do too much at one time in a single email.
Avoid long subject lines and lead with the point of the email
Buyers use smartphones over 60% of the time to check out emails. In general, we put too much copy in the subject line and often bury the point of the email at the end of the subject line. Our research shows that shorter subject lines are opened more often, especially when the point of the email comes first.
Keep your email copy short
Once again – over 60% of buyers check email on mobile phones. Keep this top of mind when you write your copy. Your emails should be easy to read, and broken into paragraphs. No more than three short paragraphs are ideal. You can also use bullets to catch your buyer’s attention. .
Test subject lines – especially for top of funnel email campaigns
When we run outsourced sales lead generation campaigns we run a series of three emails to the same list as a best practice. And we often use the same educational content offer for that 3 part campaign. This allows us to do a comprehensive A/B subject line split test as part of that first effort. We will often test as many as 3 to 4 subject lines in the first email. This allows the subsequent email blasts to drill down on the topics most likely to engage the buyer.
Don’t overuse your company name
Just like sales calls, you don’t want to simply talk about how awesome you are. You want to stay customer centric. Keep your focus on the customer, their pain points and needs. It is important to mention your name but only use it once or twice. Starting every other sentence with your company name turns your communication into an advertisement, not a helpful and professional email.
Lead with an educational offer
Always focus on giving your buyer something of value. Lead with an educational offer. Emails are the preferred way buyers wish to learn about new solutions, so attach a link to a blog article, white paper or video. When buyers get a link with an interesting asset they are more like to save it.
Include case studies
If you are going to talk about yourself and your solution use a case study to do this. This allows a customer to understand how your solution has helped solve problems for buyers like them, and helps them start to imagine and consider how your solution can help them solve a similar problem.
Personalize with recipient’s name and company
With the adoption of marketing automation tools, data merge fields are now the norm. It’s simply rude not to personalize. Use the prospect’s first name in the email. Include the company name if appropriate, however, only do this if you have a clean list!. By doing so, your email stands out.
Set a goal for each specific email
In this era of content marketing and access to digital education, email is being used for multiple purposes, so be sure you have a goal for each email. Is it for nurturing, is it for generating a new lead or is it for developing a lead. You should then message the copy of the email to the right audience and make the right education offer using the following content framework below.
End with a clear call to action (CTA)
Your email should always have a clear call to action. When we run an outsourced sales campaign, it should be as specific as possible and require the least amount of effort from your prospect. For example, have a link to clearly send them to the educational content, give them a day/time for a 10 minute call to discuss the value you can provide for their business. If you have a calendar app, such as Calendly, use that to let prospects set up their own meeting.
How Outsourced Sales Can Help?
Gabriel Sales helps companies build modern sales and marketing operations with a new approach for companies that want to outsourced sales. To learn more about we can help you with email marketing to generate new leads check out our top of funnel lead generation campaign services page.
by Glen Springer | Mar 6, 2017
How Sales Outsourcing can be applied to many different areas to grow company revenue
Sales outsourcing can be applied to multiple stages of a company’s sales process to help accelerate revenue, increase sales funnel volume and to drive a more consistent flow of real sales opportunities. And with the proliferation of modern sales and marketing technologies like CRMs and marketing automation platforms it is now possible to use outsourcing for point solutions for multiple stages of your sales funnel.
Here are the areas that you can use a sales outsourcing partner to provide a point solution to help you increase your sales lead generation process to grow revenue this year.
Targeting and Initial Lead Generation Database. The first step in building any sustainable lead generation process is to ensure you are targeting the right market and generating targets that are the right fit for your solution. Think of your target database as this foundation. Without the proper database of leads to target your sales funnel never gets off the ground. A sales outsourcing company will have subscriptions to multiple research tools and access to multiple databases that most small business or start-ups don’t have (and that probably would not make sense to invest in). An outsourcing company can help you construct the right database quickly.
Initial Engagement. Meaningful marketing is centered on making the buyer aware you exist. This requires a combination of email marketing, cost effective pay per click advertising and phone reps to introduce your solution. To engage with prospects and potential buyers in a meaningful way, you must develop tactics that use educational content to introduce your company to the buyer. And you need to align the distribution of that content across both digital communication and your reps. To do this effectively, you must have a content marketing strategy in place to provide educational engagement, and well trained reps to support that effort. An adequate marketing and sales company can do this for you quickly.
Conversion. Sales outsourcing companies are now using modern sales and marketing technologies that score leads in real time and delivers profile information that identifies what buyers are most likely to buy. Automated campaigns have higher conversion rates but in some cases companies do not have enough calling resources to help them to convert earlier stage buyers that have not made an inbound request. A sales outsourcing company can help you staff part time or full time reps for specific period of time to help you mine you system for more leads faster.
Sales and Marketing Automation Technology. Businesses are now leveraging tools to simplify and automate parts of the sales process. A sales outsourcing company will understand how these technologies work. The company will also have experience customizing these tools for different types of sales. You may want to consider outsourcing your automation technology to a company that can do it quickly with a blended team of experts to save you time and money.
Gabriel Sales provides full service sales outsourcing solutions for start-ups and small businesses. This also includes providing point solutions for companies looking to build modern sales and marketing operations. You can click here to learn more about our specific sales outsourcing solutions and click here to learn more about our approach to outsourced sales.
by Glen Springer | Mar 1, 2017
As an outsourced sales company we get to meet many small business owners that have fantastic solutions and powerful sales stories to tell. And in many cases they are hitting a wall where they are hiring more reps, or even worse churning through reps that are struggling to move deals through their sales funnel.
In many cases this is because they are depending on their sales reps to move deals forward and they are not giving them the type of content they need to make it easy for the buyer to buy. In fact, according to a survey of 1200 buyers completed in Q4 of 2016 – 85% of most organizations now prefer to make all are part of their initial purchase decision through digital channels whenever possible and then 75% of those buyers will not make a purchase decision without engaging with a sales rep at the end of the buying process.
This means you need to use digital content to help your sales team or your outsourced sales team to sell to their buyers.
One way we help companies address this challenge as an outsourced sales company is to use the following types of video:
Short Video Demos – You can quickly create demos of your product and solutions. This makes it easier for your buyer to check out your solution and if they are still interested you can do a custom demo.
Headshot Videos – Headshot videos can be used to answer FAQs, or explain your value props and differentiators and the buyer can meet the executives that stand behind the product to help your outsourced sales team build trust.
Short Intro Pitch Video – Remember don’t get too pitchy in these videos. You can explain the problems that exist for the client, the impacts of those problems and how you can solve this problem, often in as little as 2-3 minutes. These videos need to be professionally done but do not need to be over produced. This makes it easy for your outsourced sales team to recap the conversation with your buyer and gives the buyers something to share internally.
Checklist Videos – You can often take one or two slides from a webcast video and expand them to 5-10 slides and you have a quick checklist videos on a topic that is easy to digest anywhere your buyer has a mobile device.
Gabriel Sales build modern sales and marketing operations for companies committed to sales growth. We help them create the content they need to meet the needs of their buyers and then we provide outsourced sales teams to help share that content in the market. To learn more about our comprehensive sales outsourcing services please visit our outsourced sales team page.
by Glen Springer | Feb 28, 2017
According to the 2016 study by the Outsourcing Institute the top two reasons for outsourcing any function is:
- To reduce & control operating costs
- To improve company focus
The next three reasons companies outsource are:
- To gain access to capabilities you don’t already have
- Free internal resources for other purposes
- Give you access to resources that are not available internally
We have addressed how an outsourced sales and marketing company can help reduce costs in this blog post here so this article will quickly list how, what and where an outsourced sales company can increase your capability and capacity.
Increasing Capability
With the recent requirement of email marketing, content marketing and the addition of marketing automation and CRMs, outsourced sales is now becoming an accepted part of this overall outsourcing trend. Your new digital buyer now buys using both digital content, emails and working with sales reps. An outsourcing sales company will understand how your buyer now buys and will help to customize a sales process that works for your buyer.
An outsourced sales company will have both the experience and expertise to manage all of these different tactics and tools. More importantly a sales outsourcing company will have the expertise to help you implement these tools and tactics with aligned sales and marketing campaigns to help you generate sales qualified leads. Including the timing and best practices to execute a repeatable sales process.
Capacity
An outsourced sales company will have the sales and marketing team you need to quickly run campaigns. This includes:
- The marketing talent to target the market, create the copy and content you need to run effective lead generation campaigns and the technology experts to automate large parts of your sales process.
- And once the lead is generated they will have the sales reps, buyer education reps and in some cases closers to help you fill your sales funnel and generate more revenue faster.
Clearly some sales reps are better at telephone introductions than others but the talent required to share content and do a basic introduction early in the sales process is neither complex nor uncommon. An outsourcing sales company that knows how to market your product will be able to staff the resources to help you generate your sales leads as well, especially if they are supported by quality content. They will also know how to probe for your prospects pains and objectives. So you will immediately be able to free up your own internal team to focus on later stage deals.
As an outsourced sales and marketing company Gabriel Sales specializes in helping companies build modern sales and marketing operations to generate more sales qualified leads. To learn more about our sales outsourcing and marketing services visit our outsourced sales services page.
